Impacting Society Through Design: The Adoption of Socially Responsible Design in the Nordic Countries and China

Abstract

Nordic countries have been playing a leading role in creating designs that have a positive influence on the environment, individual lifestyles, and societal structure. This study aims to understand how this transformative concept can be strategically adopted by China and integrated into Chinese society. Socially Responsible Design (SRD) is a design approach that incorporates economic, environmental, and social factors into the design process and assesses its constructive and significant contributions towards the well-being and lifestyle of various stakeholders. This study investigated the current state of SRD in Nordic countries and China, respectively, with a focus on identifying the cultural factors impacting SRD and establishing the approaches in which China can leverage lessons from Scandinavian experiences to foster the growth of SRD. The theoretical foundation of this study consists of the Stakeholder Theory and the Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory. Due to a lack of related prior research, this study employed an inductive research approach to summarize and derive research findings through qualitative research methods, including in-depth interviews, participant observations, and secondary data analysis. The key findings and contributions presented in this thesis are threefold. First, it analyzes the roles and impacts of five types of stakeholders, i.e., companies, governments, industry organizations, design practitioners, and consumers and communities, in the development of SRD in Nordic countries and China. Second, it reveals that smaller power distances coupled with higher levels of indulgence within cultural dimensions are conducive to the development of SRD. Third, it proposes tailored recommendations for developing SRD in China based on the insights from the Nordic model.